Tennessee Risky

Everyone in this town admired and respected Chris Stapleton. When Traveller was completed, Cindy Mabe had a plan to get him CMA Awards votes – mainly by mailing the music to everyone in the city. By the time voting started, everyone had a copy and was saying the record was life changing. Well, it put [CMA Awards Exec. Prod.] Robert Deaton in a spot, because Chris had five nominations but didn’t have a hit on the radio or anywhere else.

Joe Fisher was in A&R for us at the time. He hadn’t signed Stapleton but, like all of us, was falling in love with the music as the demos were coming through. One Saturday, Joe was driving around town with a new friend named Trace Ayala, who was know to us as “Justin Timberlake’s best friend since they were in the third grade together back in Memphis.” Joe’s CD changer flips over to the new Stapleton rough mixes, and Ayala flips out. “Justin would love this! Can I send it to him?” So, Joe calls me from the car, and I said, “Yeah, okay. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Fast forward a bit, Joe’s in his office and gets call from a woman who says, “You don’t know me, but I’m Jessica Biel. I’m Justin Timberlake’s wife, and his birthday is coming up. He’s got everything, so I can’t buy a gift, but I try to give him experiences. Is there any way you can convince Chris Stapleton to fly on our jet to our place in Montana to play at his party?” So, we make the calls. Chris comes to my office and asks if he should do it. I said, “Hell yeah. Why wouldn’t you? Whatever happens in your career, you’ll be able to tell your grandkids you hung out one night with Harrison Ford and probably a bunch of other famous people.” Well, the story goes that another song. Then he says, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are blessed tonight to have one of the greatest tunesmiths in the world with us in the audience. A man who can take common words in the English language and turn them into magic. Please, everyone, welcome one of the greatest songwriters ever, Mr. Sammy Cahn.” And the guy next to me stands up. The spotlight hits him, he waves, and Sinatra goes on to say, “I don’t know why you’re here in Cincinnati, Sammy, but I’m happy you are, and I love you. I love you so much, I made sure you got a seat right next to Jesus!”

I claim to be the first person in the nation to get airplay on Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl.” It showed up in the mail one day, no advance warning, and I don’t know anything about the guy. But it’s great. The next day, I’m going to Columbus, OH, so I take it with me, along with all the music I’m supposed to get played. I got two big stations to play it out of the box. Of course, it went on to massive success, and Rick and I became friends.

Later, one of the station GMs came to me because he was on the board of the new zoo, which was really struggling. He said, “It has rained every weekend, and I think we’re going to go under. I need your help. Don’t you have this Rick Springfield guy who’s on General Hospital? Could we do a benefit for the zoo?” We set up “98-cent WNCI day with Rick Springfield” at the zoo with a temporary stage, barriers and security. Rick was not

Stapleton was so great and Timberlake was so infatuated that Timberlake borderline ignored all the other guests.

Back to Robert Deaton’s problem. Can he put an artist with no hits on the show? But can he just ignore someone with five nominations? The only time that has happened was Kacey Musgraves with the ACMs, and I’ll go to my grave carrying a grudge about that. Anyway, Cindy Mabe brings up the idea of asking Justin if he would perform with Chris on the award show, and Stapleton makes the call.

There’s a wrinkle here, because Tim McGraw was dropping a big new record the week of the CMAs, but Eric Church came to us at the last minute wanting to drop a record, too. It was not the way I wanted to do it, but it’s Eric Church. I was trying to honor his wish to get music to his fans. So, we busted our chops to get the record out, which pissed off McGraw and his manager Scott Siman immensely. Scott texted me during the show to rip me for doing them dirty.

The night of the show, we are more than $900,000 in the hole on Traveller ... because marketing music is expensive. We didn’t have streaming yet, just iTunes downloads. We agreed internally that if we sold 30,000 units from this performance, we’d be really happy. Well, I’m in the audience watching on my phone in real time, and the numbers are flying. People are buying at an incredible pace. I did the math in my head and, by the time the performance was over, we were in the black. I got home at 3am, drunk, and called Scott Siman to say, “What me, you, Tim and Eric didn’t see coming ... was Chris Stapleton.” That record just fucking blew by everyone. We did 350,000 equivalent units in that week and never looked back.